twenty-four

The Monday-morning train to the city was packed so thick with commuters that I had the uncomfortable sensation of swimming at a public pool on a scorching summer day. I had nothing against the masses of honest working people trudging through the routine of a forty-hour week, but I knew I’d never be one of them. It had nothing to do with my near-royal lineage, which at this point was merely a pencil line connecting me to previous generations of insanely rich people. In my adult state of poverty, I should have revered the carload of earnest business people crammed neatly in rows of two or three. Instead, I reacted like a caged animal at a petting zoo hoping to grab some kid’s candy bar and then scurry back to my lair. My analogy was not far off, since I could probably pick up about a dozen half-eaten Danishes wrapped in butter-soaked paper had I waited around the train station long enough. My stomach grumbled with discontent at the mere suggestion of pre-eaten pastries. Craving partially eaten food is the litmus test for a true Freegan.

Hoping to achieve a Zen moment that would last long enough for the train to creep its way from the Jamaica stop all the way to Penn Station, I located my sketch pad and made room on my lap. By looking at the reflection in the window, I could stare directly at a man located two seats ahead and to my left without being obvious. I attempted a wistful, vague expression as I let my eyes loll softly at the passing landscapes morphing from suburban green to brick and mortar. For all the unsuspecting man knew, I was caught in a meandering daydream. In reality, I was studying his face and capturing his features on my pad. As always, I worked top down, focusing on his hair. Just like shoes, hair can tell an awful lot about a man. My subject was a particularly neat man with his short, almost military-style cut, parted and swept slightly to the side. I imagined him skimming the sun-tipped ends with a comb and then checking to make sure his quarter-inch sideburns were symmetrical. The rest of the commuters appeared rumpled and drowsy, but this man’s posture was alert, almost anticipatory, and his suit and shirt remained crisply starched.

The man had caught my eye from the platform when he got out of a car chauffeured by his wife. Seated at the wheel, his wife stood out in contrast, still wrapped in her bathrobe, hair tousled, and gripping a travel mug loaded with caffeine. The scene seemed benign—harried wife drops husband at the station and then rushes home to hustle the kids to the school bus. What really grabbed my attention was the couple’s goodbye kiss. The man had leaned tentatively toward his wife and air kissed her as if he were a woman protecting his make-up. It’s these obscure, meaningless moments that always seemed to crowd my head as if I had anti–attention deficit disorder. I had a tendency to linger too long. This was probably why I’d never be able to manage a regular, nine-to-five job.

Since I had nothing better to do than sketch a complete stranger, I gave the man’s eyes a suspicious slant and turned his lips in such a way that it appeared he was withholding a pertinent fact. I pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin to create an exaggerated sense of self. And then, just because I could, I made his right sideburn a tad longer than the left, a fact I’m sure would drive the man crazy. I imagined him gripping my picture, frantically looking for a pencil with an intact eraser to even out my artistic license.

As I finished the intricate pattern on the man’s tie, the train rolled into Penn Station so slowly I could have walked alongside. The majority of morning riders seemed pleased with the train’s feather pillow landing, as if horns and whistles might insult their morning coma. My guy, on the other hand, had places to go. He rose quickly and positioned himself against the door, ready to spring in action. Since I didn’t have a briefcase or work paraphernalia to slow me down, I fell easily into pace behind the man. We led the rush, but the foot traffic bottlenecked at the base of the escalator, leaving me so close to the man that I spied the faint markings of a single closed earring hole. Sure enough when the escalator unloaded, the man bee-lined straight into the arms of an equally neat man awaiting his arrival, and this time there was no hesitation in their kiss.

I chuckled out loud to no one in particular and watched with pleasure as the man’s face lit upon seeing his companion. If I had taken my trip in reverse, my sketch would have revealed a completely different scenario, a happy pairing of two people counting the hours until their next meeting.

I left the couple in peace and headed toward the subway. Tremont Avenue Elementary School was a hike from Penn Station. I joined the mobs of straphangers on a subway north to the Bronx until I reached 174th Street, a shaky neighborhood in the shadows of the Cross Bronx Expressway. The art program at Tremont had been all but obliterated when the last art teacher retired with no replacement in the budget. My monies allowed for two new teachers and enough supplies to last a decade. I relinquished all supervisory control because I fell madly in love with the teachers hired to revive the program. Both are experienced professionals yet somehow immune to teacher burnout, and I trusted them implicitly. My only condition was the ability to see the money at work.

On this particular day, I had to escape Harbor House. I should have tried to follow up with Becky via phone or her new address, but I had wimped out. I figured we’d catch up in the city in the next few weeks.

I also didn’t want to hang around the house and obsess over the news of Teddy’s autopsy results. I had absolutely no memory of a nut allergy, and I grew weary trying to re-create every morsel I had ever seen my brother ingest. Teddy was not an adventurous eater by nature, and I had to assume he knew to avoid sensitive foods. Most importantly, I did not want to be in shouting range when DeRosa met with my father to request full access to the labs. As it stood, my father had received wind of my dramatic pursuit of Igor, and it did not thrill him. DeRosa’s inability to control me was a disappointment. In fact, my ill-planned vigilante act so unnerved my father that he’d appeared once more on my front porch. He’d arrived at the crack of dawn that morning, obviously squeezing me into his busy day. He was frustrated, and it showed with a thin row of perspiration forming along his thinning hairline.

“Constance, this is unacceptable,” he had said. “Isn’t it enough that you are already in danger without creating it yourself? I am working very hard to keep you safe, and your actions are making it difficult.”

“Dad, you can’t control everything and you know you can’t manage me of all people.”

“This family is not having another funeral,” my father had said, actually stamping his foot for emphasis. “For once, Constance, do as I say.”

The meeting between DeRosa and my father was scheduled for early today and in a fit of self-preservation, I decided to make myself scarce. I took advantage of my exile and booked myself as a guest artist at Tremont Elementary in the South Bronx. This meant I got to enjoy an afternoon in an art studio equipped with tiny chairs and desks and enough glitter, glue, and string to challenge Santa’s workshop. It was a safe haven for both me and the children of Tremont Elementary.

Along the walk from the subway to the school, I nodded pleasantly at the heroin-addicted prostitutes who either started early or were finishing up a long night. It was unimaginable to me how parents could walk their children to school along this parade route of destitution. Although my art program was a drop in the bucket compared with the sums of money required to overhaul the area, it was all I could do short of loading these kids in a van and transporting them back to Harbor House in search of asylum. On the upside, I could probably pick up some Dumpster diving tips from my young charges.

Before every school visitation, I planned an art lesson that was both educational and fun. Today I was assigned to work with five- and six-year-olds. The objective was to have the children learn the letters in their name by designing each symbol into an animal. I illustrated my name on the board, carving my two Cs into giant crabs. Although many of us enter school already counting to ten and spelling simple words, the task seemed well beyond the kindergarteners and most of the first-grade classes. And it wasn’t just the letters that were daunting. Apparently, inner city children have little to no exposure to animals besides rodents, pit bulls, and bugs. I stumbled my way through the lesson, revealing my unfamiliarity with urban names such as Taneisha and Ka’sheena. On my third attempt to spell Du’vaine (having grossly misplaced the apostrophe), I changed the project to freestyle watercolors.

By the end of the school day, my back hurt. I thanked the teachers profusely for indulging my whims and dragged my beaten body back through the overcrowded hallways, sincerely regretting that I had not driven into the city. Standing on the building’s stoop, I scanned the neighborhood now filled with children running aimlessly among the crack addicts and streetwalkers. Even an experienced Freegan would have trouble rustling up a meal here. Like a prince on a horse, Charlie’s blond head stuck out of the crowd like the white man he was. He leaned against the car with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and longs legs crossed casually, as if posing for an ad. The only thing that fit properly into the scene was the rundown Gremlin.

“Someone is getting detention,” Charlie reprimanded.

“A girl can’t get a day off to contribute to society?”

“Not if her disappearance freaks out her housemates and sends her bodyguard cop into full metal jacket mode.”

“Oops, I never thought about that.”

“S’alright sweetheart,” Charlie said as pecked me on the cheek. “I figured you had a bit of wanderlust in you, so I called the school to see if you scheduled anything in the ’hood today.”

“You know me well.”

“I know you well enough to know that you don’t feel like going home just yet, so I thought we’d take a side trip to Brighton Beach.” Charlie shrugged his shoulders impishly. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a lead on Igor. You’re already in trouble with Frank; how much worse could it get?”

“Fantastic.”

“Your chariot awaits, Miss Prentice.”

Charlie was correct in his assumption. Like characters in a play, I wanted to erase myself from a storyline where I was a central figure: Teddy’s autopsy revealed that he’d eaten something with macadamia nut oils, triggering an anaphylactic episode. The incident alone could have appeared to be a tragic mistake. It was entirely possible that Teddy himself purchased a sweet in the lab’s cafeteria ultimately causing his demise. However, his death wasn’t isolated. When combined with the threats on my life and Naomi’s suicide, a pattern was emerging. People associated with Sound View Laboratories had a difficult time staying alive.

Fatal allergic reactions happen within minutes. The fact that Teddy died in his office meant he ingested something while there, which led DeRosa to believe that the murderer had unfettered access to the building. To further that theory, Teddy’s medical records were housed at the labs, making every authorized employee a suspect. The investigation was now at an important juncture. DeRosa needed to wrestle control from my father because, whether my father liked it or not, odds were good that someone associated with the labs was causing deaths.

Before distracting myself with the neat-looking man on the train into the city, I’d tried to predict the conversation between my father and the detective. Should I assume DeRosa could even make a dent in my father’s hubris? I expected this meeting would be a shadowboxing event where both maneuvered for the most advantageous position. They each wanted Teddy’s death solved, but on their own terms. Although DeRosa was a team player, he also seemed like he was used to being the captain of that team. I sensed my father’s back-seat driving got on his nerves. Still, it was imperative DeRosa understand that if he couldn’t bring the investigation to a swift end, then my father—with his endless resources—would make it happen.

My mother’s meltdown and her admission that our father controlled a lifetime of our medical assessments allowed DeRosa a window into my father’s overriding authority. After my mother’s hurried departure the previous day, I’d reminded DeRosa that my father defended many a controversial scientific hypotheses in front of highly educated panels of PhDs. Dr. William Prentice was used to being on the defensive and was therefore a formidable match.

“What’s your strategy?” I’d asked DeRosa Sunday afternoon.

“To avoid having you tell me my strategy,” he’d replied.

“I promise to just listen.”

“I’m going to let your father talk about Teddy from a father’s perspective. It will give me room to compliment Teddy and develop a rapport.”

My father loved to talk about Teddy and his achievements because it was a direct reflection on him. DeRosa, it seemed, had already figured this out.

“Don’t corner him,” I’d directed.

“I’ll try to remember that, Nancy Drew.”

“And don’t mention my name. He’ll clam up.”

“I already checked that box.”

–––

Charlie drove toward Brooklyn with the windows down, the radio blasting, and his arm draped over the car door. He sang along to the top hits of the seventies, slapping his free hand on the car in time with the beat. This was a guy who hadn’t a care in the world, and I loved him for it. I was also aware that if I conjured up an image of Teddy right now, Charlie would burst into tears. I mentally arranged the men in life and ranked them on a fictitious scale of emotional expression. If Charlie was an eight, my father ranked in the decimals, with DeRosa, Jonathan, and Teddy inching up the scale. Teddy’d had a zest for life, but he lived within the serious constraints of his professional career. It was almost as if wasting time would have an impact on all humanity. Jonathan, I felt, had “found” himself in his twenties and was confidently content in his choices, leaving him firmly anchored at a 5 on my emotional-expression scale. The enigma DeRosa exposed very little of his light side. However, given his penchant for puzzle-solving, I expected to see his joy emanate if and when Teddy’s murder was solved.

I pointed to an iPod-sized gadget adhered to the Gremlin’s dashboard. “What’s this thing, Charlie?”

“What’s this thing, she says with ignorance,” Charlie emoted with Shakespearean flair.

I attempted to pry the device off the dashboard, but Charlie swatted my hand away. “Charlie, just tell me what this freaking thing is.”

“A Dollameter, my dear. This ‘freaking thing’ is a Dollameter,” Charlie sang out as he leaned on the horn, willing a double-parked tow truck away with a screeching honk.

“Should I know what a Dollameter is?”

“The next greatest invention, targeted for the Green market. A high-tech must-have that will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. And in contrast to you, my unpretentious and charitable friend, I plan on blowing it all on booze and women.”

“Blowing being the operative word,” I commented wryly. “Charlie, since you’ve only sold a quantity of one and that sale is to yourself, why not give me your best product pitch?”

“Certainly.” He turned to face me despite driving forward, a bad habit he’d adopted as a teenager. I called it driving with his ear. I grabbed the steering wheel and aimed for the white line.

“Charlie, eyes on the road.”

“Good point. Anyway, the Dollameter links your automobile’s real-time mileage to the amount you paid per gallon of gas. The device calculates the cost of each trip the driver makes. It’s almost like counting the calories as you eat. This way, an environmentally concerned driver can decide if the trip is worth the money, hence putting themselves on a gas-to-dollar diet.”

“But don’t you have to take the route at least once for the mileage—”

“A GPS can estimate the mileage for different routes.”

“That’s actually pretty cool,” I said.

“Then you could divide the Dollameter’s output by the number of passengers and get the cost per rider. You could even program it for that. It would promote carpooling.”

“Yes, but the additional riders would add weight to the car and lower the gas mileage per dollar driven.”

“We’d be encouraged to pick only slim friends.”

“Mean and funny all at once. A reality show in the making. What should we call the show?” I asked.

“Too Fat to Fit?” Charlie suggested.

“Thin Gets You In?” I said, riffing off Charlie’s title.

“I like that, and I bet I could retrofit the car seats with built-in scales so when the passenger sits, the seat would register their weight.”

“Maybe the Dollameter could also track single drivers of SUVs and add environmental points to their license?”

“I like how you think. We’ll call it the Dollameter Tax.” Charlie stretched his arm out the window to slow traffic and maneuvered the car into a tight parking spot behind an oversized eighties Oldsmobile. “And now that we’ve solved the world’s problems, let’s give the Gremlin a rest and explore Igor’s hometown.”

Neither Charlie nor I had ever been to Brighton Beach. At first glance, it looked as though time froze thirty years ago: the Berlin wall had just fallen and the first transmissions of MTV were indoctrinating the Soviet countries with American pop culture. Women wore more make-up than Tammy Faye Bakker and sported big, overly processed hair, all of it bleached blond. If only I had known shoulder pads were going to make a comeback, I could have been a millionaire again. The stretch of beach, unexpectedly beautiful, was inundated with Speedo-sporting men over sixty. Despite the cool June temperatures, the ocean was afloat in dissidents accustomed to the icy Black Sea.

“This is some crazy shit.”

“I’m getting naked,” Charlie answered, pretending to remove his shirt.

“The clothes stay on in public or I’m driving home.”

Charlie wrapped an affectionate arm around my shoulder. “That implies the clothes come off in private.”

We strolled the beach arm in arm and I relaxed into our friendship, thankful for Charlie’s constant presence in my life. Eventually Charlie would meet the woman of his dreams and I’d become Aunt CeCe to his children, but for the time being it was easy enough to play the part of sometime girlfriend. Our affair had always been casual, and I accepted Teddy’s death as the cause of our current needy affection.

“So can I tell you a little more about the Dollameter?”

“Of course,” I encouraged. Charlie had been tinkering with something for as long as I could remember. His intense creative energy mixed with a casual attitude made him so enticing to me. He didn’t take himself too seriously, which allowed him to explore boundaries without worrying about consequences.

Charlie lengthened his stride, taking on a confident swagger. “An automotive company that produces very small, very intelligent, some might say smart cars”—he winked with exaggeration—“has expressed interest in the Dollameter.”

“How much interest?”

His jaunty walk came to a stop as he scanned the storefronts. He pointed to an ornately adorned restaurant made to look like a Russian orthodox church. “Let’s just say I’d like you to be my guest at the Volna restaurant situated across from the beach in the heart of Little Odessa.”

“A flush Freegan? Tempting.”

“Come on, CeCe. For one night, let’s not eat garbage.”

“I’ll make that decision after I taste the food.”

Charlie steered me toward the restaurant, ignoring my weak protests about waste and overconsumption, and before I knew it, I was sitting comfortably in a booth dripping in red velvet with Russian icons mounted on the wall. The music was dark and moody, putting me in a food coma before we even ordered. Charlie ordered plates full of pierogis and kielbasa with beets and pickles on the side. A gross and excessive smorgasbord of items arrived that would hopefully transport well in the doggie bags I imagined filling. Although the pounds of food overwhelmed me, what bothered me most were the shots of vodka Charlie was consuming like water.

“Your liver is crying for a rest. I swear the whites of your eyes are turning yellow with every cheers.”

“Don’t worry, CeCe. I’m a good drunk.”

“You are a good drunk, Charlie,” I said, and I meant it. When Charlie got his groove on, he could motivate a barroom of nuns to dance on the tables. “But I’m concerned about your motivation to get sloppy. Since Teddy’s death, you haven’t exactly been Mr. Happy Hour.”

Charlie wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, his expression turning grave. “CeCe, remember when I missed the sixth-grade field trip to the Hayden Planetarium because I overslept?”

“I do. And you missed a good one. I remember thinking how cool it was because at the end the teachers let us stay to see the Pink Floyd light show.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Charlie threw back another shot and continued his remorseful walk down memory lane. “How about the time I cut school for a week and convinced my mother I was participating in an Eagle Scout convention? I wasn’t an Eagle Scout. Hell, I was never even a Cub Scout.”

“Teddy was the Eagle Scout. You just pretended to go to meetings with him.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Or, one of my worst memories, the day I took the bus back from MIT mid-semester because my parents wouldn’t pick up a drop out.”

“Stop the ‘woe is me’ attitude. You know I don’t do the therapy thing, so just tell me what’s bothering you.”

Charlie fiddled with the empty shot glass, waiting for me to coax a confession out of him. Fat chance.

“Look, Charlie, I’m not doing drama tonight, but I’ll go as far as saying that your best attribute is not running with the pack. You would have never thought up the Dollameter or the handful of other ideas you’ve patented if you were tied behind a desk redesigning widgets for a major corporation.”

Charlie’s eyes misted, and I watched as the youthful energy seeped from his body like a balloon with a pinhole leak. “CeCe, you and Teddy were the only people in my life that kept me on track.”

“I think Teddy kept us both in check.” I nabbed a choice piece of sausage with my fork. “Did you really take the bus home from MIT?”

“I was waiting for the bus when Teddy came and got me,” Charlie said.

I reached across the table, extricated Charlie’s fingers from the shot glass, and wrapped his hand around mine. “I admit I’m not Teddy, but I’m still here for you.”

“Not for long.”

“Am I going somewhere?”

“DeRosa is into you.”

There it was again, except this time it came with a third-party endorsement. Up until this point, I thought I imagined DeRosa’s backhanded compliments. I recognized the standard what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this flirting, but DeRosa’s advances seemed harder to decipher than a five-star Sudoku puzzle. I felt flattered and deceived all at once. For Charlie’s sake, I maintained a poker face. I anticipated that one of us would leave our intermittent relationship soon, but I didn’t expect it would be me.

“So just because a guy expresses interest, I get the vapors and lose the ability to think for myself?”

Charlie’s inebriated lips were working slowly, his words loosening at the ends of sentences like he just received a shot of Novocain. “Frank is good for you. He’s solid, but he’s got enough going on upstairs to keep you on your toes and versa visa.” He mangled vice versa, making it sound like a Russian delicacy on the Volna restaurant’s specials board. For all I knew we’d actually ordered it.

“I’m not looking for a bridge partner,” I said as I calculated the tip for Charlie and counted out money from his wallet.

“I’ll make you a bet, Ms. Prentice.” Charlie stuck out his pinky finger, and I automatically hooked mine around his. “I’m not putting out for you anymore, no matter how much you beg. I’ll bet my lack of attention will drive you straight to DeRosa by the end of the summer.”

“What do I get if I win?”

“If you lose, you get DeRosa; if you win, I’ll have to lower my standards and ravage your body against all protestations.” Charlie fumbled his way across the table and slapped a wet kiss on my mouth. “Either way, you win, CeCe.”

As we were leaving the restaurant, Charlie yanked a flyer off a community board in the lobby. “Ce, check out this ad for a roommate. My bags are packed. Friendly, single female, looking for roommate. Just need enough room for my Springer. I think we’ve just found the perfect match for Becky. Do we know if she likes dogs?”

“Please, let’s not count Becky out just yet. Maybe she’ll change her mind.” I dug my hand deep into Charlie’s front pant pocket and fished for the Gremlin’s keys. “I’m driving tonight.”